WWNFD: What Would Nicholas Ferrar Do?

The Society of St. Nicholas Ferrar is a new initiative emerging from within The Episcopal Church to encourage the praying of the Daily Office.  Any initiative with this aim is surely to be welcome.  And, in a particular way, Ferrar and his community at Little Gidding embodied this gift and vocation of Anglicanism, to pray the Office in a domestic, 'secular' context.  As Martin Thornton said of the Book of Common Prayer, it was "designed for an integrated, united community, predominantly lay", breathing "a sane 'domestic' spirit". 

Also to be generally welcomed is that the praying of the Office will "conform to the rubrics of the current prayerbook of the Member's province".  Generally welcomed because some contemporary Anglican versions of Morning and Evening Prayer have abandoned the Cranmerian format, with its emphasis on unchanging texts, monthly Psalter, two weighty Scripture readings, Apostles' Creed, and classical collects.   Mindful of the theological incoherence evident in much contemporary Anglicanism, and our need to recover from decades of desiccated theology, the Cranmerian format - with its robust, sustained attention to Scripture, repetition of the Apostles' Creed, and deeply Augustinian classical collects - is precisely what is required for a time such a this.   However, while there are some weaknesses and unnecessary options in Rite I Morning and Evening Prayer in TEC's BCP 1979, the Cranmerian office can be prayed using this form.

So, yes, there is much to welcome and affirm in the Society of St. Nicholas Ferrar.

But ... then there is the opening clauses of the Society's Charter:

By the grace of God, the Liturgical Movement of the 20th century reestablished the Holy Eucharist as the principal act of Christian worship, addressing its gradual replacement by Morning Prayer in many parts of the Anglican Communion.

However, this Eucharistic renewal has coincided with lamentable neglect of the Daily Office as a pillar of historic Anglican worship.

There is something of a contradiction here.  On the one hand, welcoming the Liturgical Movement and the Parish Communion movement, and the displacing regular Sunday Mattins in many parts of the Anglican Communion.  On the other hand, referring to the "lamentable neglect of the Daily Office as a pillar of historic Anglican worship". 

The problem is that the latter did not simply 'coincide' with the former.  The former was the direct cause of the latter.  The Parish Communion movement banished Mattins.  It was because of the Parish Communion movement that Mattins ceased to be "a pillar of historic Anglican worship".

Michael Ramsey had warned of precisely such an outcome in his address 'The Parish Communion':

I believe also that there is still much to be learnt from the Matins and Sermon whereby congregations were nurtured in the Scriptures.  May we never have a generation of worshippers unfamiliar with the Canticles and Psalms! I am not denying the inevitability of the immense changes.  I am pleading that we should be careful about values which may be lost.

As the Charter for the Society of St. Nicholas Ferrar itself testifies, these values have been lost.  As a result of the Parish Communion movement, Mattins is now unknown to a generation or more of Anglican worshippers.  It was by means of Sunday Mattins that most people in the Anglican tradition experienced the gift and riches of the Daily Office.  Displacing it thus removed this gift and these riches from the majority of Anglicans.  What is more, the widely reported renewed popularity and resonance of Choral Evensong should lead us to at least question assumptions that displacing Sunday Mattins was inevitable progress, A Good Thing. 

Likewise, we must surely question the suggestion that the outcome of the Parish Communion movement has been "Eucharistic renewal".  Has more frequent celebration and reception of the Holy Mysteries really resulted in a renewed and deepened Eucharistic piety in contemporary Anglicanism?  There is little evidence that this is so.  As Ramsey had already detected in the early stages of the Parish Communion movement, "understanding, preparation, meaningfulness, may be far to seek".

So what would Nicholas Ferrar do?  Well, we know from Turner's account of Little Gidding how regularly the Sacrament was administered in the community:

On the first Sunday of the month, and on the great solemn festivals, they celebrated the holy communion without fail.

And we know too how Sunday was routinely observered:

Then this deacon, being in his surplice and hood, for so habited he ever went to church, stepped into the reading desk and officiated at divine service.

These extracts are not here offered to suggest that this must be the Sunday pattern to which contemporary Anglicans should conform.  Encouraging more frequent reception of the Sacrament can be for the Church's good, and ensuring that the Sacrament could be received each Lord's Day was a driving force in not uncommon 'early celebrations' which emerged in 18th century Anglicanism.   The pattern of Little Gidding, however, should at least make us pause and question a too-easy acceptance of the assumptions of the Liturgical Movement and the Parish Communion movement regarding the shape and rhythms of a community which seeks to be a place 'where prayer is valid'.

Those involved in the Society of St. Nicholas Ferrar should be commended for pointing to his example and using it as a means of encouraging the praying of the Daily Office, that "pillar of historic Anglican worship".  Ferrar and Little Gidding, however, together with the experience and gift of historic Anglican worship, can lead us to a rather more sceptical assessment of the Liturgical Movement and its fruits, and a recognition that a renewal and restoration of the Daily Office also requires a more significant presence for Mattins (and Evensong) in the Sunday worship of the parish, through which more of the baptized can experience how the Office shapes and forms the soul of the individual and the community.